


Private Eyes (They're Watching You)

by prettyasadiagram



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Gen, M/M, Neighbors, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-10
Updated: 2012-10-10
Packaged: 2017-11-16 01:47:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyasadiagram/pseuds/prettyasadiagram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wonders idly if Stiles is in the know about werewolves now, or if sometime when she wasn’t paying attention, Stiles suddenly got game.</p><p>(Probably the former, she thinks, but the boy has always had potential.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Private Eyes (They're Watching You)

**Author's Note:**

> So Rita is (obviously) an original female character, which I swore I'd never do, but I liked the idea of some nosy old woman poking at Stiles about his "young man" who climbs through his window, so I made it happen. Thus, Rita.
> 
> Thanks to thatdamneddame for humoring me and betaing.
> 
> Please do not repost this work in its entirety or share this work on third-party websites such as Goodreads.

Rita is knitting a blanket. She’s not very good at it, it’s lumpy and possibly lopsided, but the Reynolds down the street just had a baby and she needs the practice. Moreover, it’s almost enough to distract her from the pain in her hips and the pull in her back.

When a car rumbles down the street, driving too slowly, even for a residential area, she puts her knitting down and breathes out a soft, “Thank God.” Her fingers were starting to cramp.

As she watches Derek Hale climb into Stiles’ second floor window, she says, “Well, that’s different.”

She wonders idly if Stiles is in the know about werewolves now, or if sometime when she wasn’t paying attention, Stiles suddenly got game.

(Probably the former, she thinks, but the boy has always had potential.)

 

  
In the morning, she bakes cookies and calls the Sheriff, “Send your son over; I have a garden that needs weeding and cookies that need eating.”

When Stiles shows up an hour later, looking half-asleep and confused, she shoves a cookie in his hand and says, “Chop, chop, kid; my garden won’t weed itself.”

She waits until he’s more awake and chatty, more like the kid she used to babysit, the one with the easy laugh and the bright grin, and less like the grim-faced teenager she sees around town, before asking, “So—Derek Hale? Is he your new booty call?”

The spew of cookie crumbs is surprisingly gratifying, if disgusting.

 

+++

 

At some point or another, Rita has babysat for almost every child in Beacon Hills, the Hales included. 

She’s good with kids and she’s better with magic, and when you need a babysitter for your werewolf children and your guardian/veterinarian makes a recommendation, what else can you do, but have a little faith?

 

+++

 

Stiles blushes and sputters, before asking, voice slightly strangled, “What?”

“You know, I saw him climbing into your room the other night. What am I supposed to think?”

Rita watches as Stiles stills, and she wonders what story he’ll spin this time, wonders if she should tell him that she knows the truth, wonders if she should warn him of what happens to humans who run with wolves.

In the end, the faint look of hysteria on his face as he stutters out that, yes, he and Derek are “dating,” is too good to pass up.

It gets even better when she asks if they’re actually together, or if it’s a friends with benefits sort of thing.

So much better than knitting.

 

+++

 

When the Argents moved to Beacon Hills, the Hales stopped coming into town as often. They tightened ranks and circled the wagons and told Rita it wasn’t safe to be seen with them.

So she did what she could, strengthened the wards on their house, poured most of her power into the old wood and snuck protection charms on the inside where she could, and then hugged them all goodbye, thinking that their logic was faulty but she wasn’t going to argue with werewolves. 

She wonders what could have been, if she’d only fought harder when the Hales decided hiding was the best option, if she’d seen the signs of Derek and Kate before things went too far.

Sometimes, when she’s lying in the dark and remembering how full her life used to be, the laughter that used to run through the Hale house, the way she ran through that house, she wonders if she could have warned them, if they hadn’t shut everyone else out.

 

+++

 

Rita sees Derek and Stiles glowering at each other in the grocery parking lot as she’s leaving the store, and she just can’t help herself.

After Derek drives off, she walks over and asks Stiles if it’s a hate sex thing he’s got with Derek, because she knows that’s what some young people are doing these days—she’s seen Gossip Girl, she knows what’s up.

She carries Stiles’ swallowed cry of horror with her till she gets to her car, where she laughs for five minutes before driving slowly home to laugh some more.

 

+++

 

Derek never came to see her after the fire, and maybe that was for the best, because they both had enough guilt to keep them awake at night that they didn’t need to add to each other’s. 

When she heard that he and Laura had left town, she went out to the Hale house and looked at the destruction, thought about babysitting Derek and Laura and their cousins and how she used to hide snacks for them in the woods.

Driving to the hospital to see Peter, Rita wondered what would happen to the house, if the county would tear it down or if Laura would fit to keep the burnt reminder standing. She puts all that aside as she sits with Peter; she can’t change those scars, but she can help with his.

 

+++

 

A few days later, Rita watches as Stiles comes home late, looking wan in the pale yellow light of the streetlamp, holding his arm stiffly by his side. She thinks of the unexplained murders and the rise of violence, and knows that things didn’t end with that fire, thinks that maybe they were just beginning. 

She asks Stiles to come over the next day, says she needs help cooking for the church bazaar, and while Stiles pokes questioningly at a pot of soup and talks about Scott and chemistry and his dad’s cholesterol, Rita gets to work. She doesn’t have much magic left, but what she does have she pours into Stiles, whispers words of good health and safety and peace when he’s too distracted to hear her. She couldn’t keep Derek safe back then, but she can now and that starts with Stiles.

 

+++

 

Rita visited Peter in the hospital for years, once a month like clockwork, to ease his pain, heal what she can, and tell him about what was going on in town. 

She went until the day when she touched his hand and there was a spark that responded. Only, it didn’t feel like Peter had before the fire, didn’t feel like sly humor and the rustle of leaves. Now there was something else, something dark that felt like claws and panting breath on the back of her neck.

She didn’t visit much after that.

When Peter went missing, she was only surprised that his disappearance didn’t actually surprise her. 

 

+++

 

Derek comes by as Rita is in the middle of her morning routine, and when she hears that engine idling, she knows. She’s heard it rumbling through the night often enough to recognize him by that sound alone. 

“The door’s open,” she calls out as she goes from window to window, entrance to entrance. It’s become a ritual for her, albeit now one only for show. She has no more power to wind around her house, but belief is a powerful thing, and so she still goes around touching the deeply carved runes and thinking, _may these walls protect and heal_.

When she gets to the front door, Derek is standing frozen in the doorway, and she thinks that if he were another man, he’d be fidgeting, and if he were Derek from before the fire, he’d already be in the kitchen making himself a sandwich. 

She beckons him in and wonders if he’s here because Stiles told him what she suspected, or if he simply overheard. 

When he says, “Hate sex?” with a look of horrified admiration, she has her answer. 

 

Rita knows that eventually Stiles will figure out the truth. He’ll see the runes or run into Derek leaving her house, but until then, she’s going to see how many shades of red she can make him turn.

Asking if Derek is a gentle lover gets her a solid fuchsia. She only wishes she had pictures. 

 

Derek says, “Stiles smells more like magic these days. He smells like you, too.”

“He’s here often enough; I’m not surprised,” Rita busies her hands with her knitting.

“He _smells_ like your magic,” Derek elaborates.

She pauses, before saying softly, sadly, “Yes well, he needs it more than I do, if he’s going to keep running with wolves.”

“What did you do?” Derek asks quietly, but Rita just shakes her head and says nothing, and eventually Derek lets himself out. 

 

Rita keeps pressing Stiles for details on his steamy relationship with Derek, until he comes barreling in when Derek’s over, out of breath and eyes wide, “You—, he—, what?”

Stiles’s betrayed expression when he realizes that Rita has known the whole truth turns somewhat giddy when she implies—over Derek’s growls—that she’s more than willing to share stories of childhood Derek, beginning with the phase where he ran around with his diaper on his head and refused to wear clothes.

His laughter lasts until she reminds Stiles that she has plenty of stories about him. Like how he used his mom’s makeup as war paint and went around biting people. 

 

(Stiles is horrified when he finds out that Rita gave him the last of her magic, says he doesn’t need it and looks at the weathered runes with a lost expression. 

Derek gets this look of understanding and sadness and just nods his thanks. 

She’d be lying if she said it was nothing, if it didn’t feel like part of her was missing, but she brushes Stiles off because what’s done is done, and she’d told Derek the truth: Stiles will need it more than her. Because if Gerard Argent is here, then things are going to fall spectacularly apart and they’ll need all the help they can get.

But she sees the way Derek and Stiles gravitate to each other, look to each other first, and she knows that that strength will see them through better than any scraps of her magic could. So if she keeps on ribbing Stiles that he and Derek would make such a cute couple, and if she keeps on telling Derek how he deserves good things when she catches him watching Stiles with this constipated look on his face, well, she’s an old lady, so they indulge her.

It’s also probably why Derek and Stiles are the only ones that are surprised when they finally, properly, get together. 

This time, when she asks Stiles if Derek is a gentle lover, it’s Derek who turns fuchsia while Stiles laughs and pulls up another weed from her garden.)


End file.
